the HECU are using it, doesn’t it make sense they’d actually use it to broadcast messages relevant to them? there’s nothing artificial about the intelligence, at least that’s how i see it
i personally think of VOX as a AI, which is why he doesnt slur his words/syallables when speaking
i would love to see more instances of male VOX voice
You’ve not been in many train stations then:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt8pu4c-i6M&feature=related
or the pre-recorded voice on phone systems? They aren’t AIs but sound exactly the same.
AI, Artifical Intelligence, that would mean Vox taking and splicing words together to create its announcements lean more towards AI than a simple answering machine that responds the same way reguardless of actions. You call an answering machine it answers the same way over and over no matter what you do. In the case of Vox, the communication system and the facility system`s are monitored constantly and then announcements are made.
In Blue Shift for instance, Vox makes announcements about power fluxuations and power failiure`s.
The biggest part though is people I guess never played around in the .wav files of Half Life 1 cause the following is a announcement Vox makes when you enter Sector C after leaving the tram. This announcement like most of them were not used in game though.
“Automated Diagnostic and Announcement Systems”. That tells me that theres not some guy sitting in a cubical punching announcements out as their needed.
the point is that the HECU probably typed in what they wanted to broadcast, there’s no automation to it all
Listen, Valve, the creator of Half Life 1 has wav files of what Vox was supposed to say and Vox clearly stated that its an automated system. There is no one standing by typing in what is to be broadcast.
I will take what is in the file structure that Valve put in their own game over what some devs think it should really be. This mod was created on how they felt Half Life should have been made. They might not see Vox as AI but in reality Vox in Valve`s eyes was ment to be more AI than is being given credit. The proof is in the puddin as you could say.
The logic of having someone type out announcements for Vox makes little sense. What happens if the room where the announcements are typed into Vox is compromised and the announcer is dead. Now you have a huge underground facility that doesnt know what is going on. Its even worse if the access to the room is cut off and a replacement cant get to putting new announcements in. An Automated Diagnostic and Announcement system would fill the bill of an announcement system that would always keep everyone informed reguardless of what happens. Even if the facility was filled with nerve gas it would still make announcements with no one around to hear it. That sounds like a way better announcement system than some guy doing all the work.
Then it comes back full circle to the .wav file of what Vox was supposed to say entering Sector C. Vox states that he is an automated diagnostic and announcement system.
Just because it’s automated to some degree doesn’t mean it can’t be manually overridden.
Anyway, as to its normal function, I can imagine that, for example, if someone wanted to request Dr. Freeman to the Test Chamber, they would submit some kind of request to the system, which would then be processed and spat back out through the speakers as “Doctor. Freeman. to. Test Chamber. Immediately.”
Or if there were a fire alarm, it would detect that and say “Fire teams. to. Sector C. Immediately.”
Sort of like the automated ATIS systems that airports use to broadcast local airport activity to pilots in the area. May or may not need some sort of user input, but otherwise pretty much automated. Still not technically an “AI” though.
Correct, all automated systems have a manual over ride for use in special cases. I just am trying to point out that when Vox was envision by Valve for Half Life 1, it was ment to be a form of AI that would monitor the facility and announce any problems freeing up man power for more important science based research.
If your a research facility would you want 1 - 2 % of your population pouring over data for the whole facility and making announcements or would you rather have that 1 - 2 % freed up to work on experiments and research and have a fully automated system?
I would shoot for a fully automated system. In Black Mesa one could envision the switch in voices when the military took over is that the friendly female voice is the automated Vox system and the male voice is the manual Vox system after manual over ride.
In any case, I just wish people wouldnt act like Vox is some glorified answering machine when Valve never ment for him to be that.
~Update~
That is basically what Vox does, he monitors all systems in the whole facility and makes announcements. If you try to enter a door you are not allowed to he sees that and announces in one way or another you do not have permission to access that area. When power was going out during the cascade while you were in the elevator in Blue Shift you heard Vox announcing power failiure. Vox in my opinion is a form of AI as he is able to monitor and announce problems in the facility on his own without direct intervention.
Well, John McCarthy who coined AI defined it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines”. If you believe his definition then that means AI is not the machine that is intelligent but the engineering and science behind making an intelligent machine.
On the topic of requesting Dr. Freeman to the test chamber, why not view it like this, the HEV suit has tracking devices in it. Vox knows Freeman is supposed to be in the test chamber at 8:00 am for instance. It is now 8:45am and his suit is still in the changing room. Vox makes announcement for Freeman to report to the Test Chamber because Vox doesnt see him there.
But then by that definition, wouldn’t modern-day fully-automated ATIS systems be considered AI?
EDIT: You made a ninja edit. :ninja:
If you want to define it like that, then yes it would be artificial, and also intelligent. Not necessarily sentient though. 
I dont believe Vox to be sentient. GlaDos was sentient but she was not an AI because Caroline was put into GlaDos so it was human intelligence not artifical.
Vox I believe is a artifically intelligent monitoring system but is not self aware. I believe there to be a fine line between AI and a monitoring system. For instance the computer in your car it monitors your sensors and if a sensor doesnt read in specs then it throws a MIL. That is not AI because it has a small guideline on what to do. Now Vox on the other hand could be considered like a car computer but he is able to splice words together and make announcements of problems that are being seen. That I think makes Vox more intelligent than the car’s computer because its only form of communication is a light and even then the light doesnt tell you why the light is on.
But I can see how some people could see Vox as nothing different than a answering machine or a automated airport announcement system. I just dont think Valve ment for Vox to be nothing more than a large answering machine.
Well ok, I think we’re on the same wavelength now, I meant basically what dky.tehkingd.u said. I suck at explaining things.
Thats understandable. But yes all automated systems have some form of manual over ride just incase of a malfunction. I wouldnt say Vox has no manual over ride. I kind of think when Vox starts making announcements from the military that he was switched over from automated mode to manual mode. Before the military arrives I feel that is all automated mode still.
I think the devs could have a lot of fun with this. With the switching from the friendly female voice to the unfriendly male voice they could play along with it making it set in that the friendly female voice is the automated portion of Vox and the male voice is the manual mode of Vox.
Can you guys make a release of all the unused voice files? I love sorting through stuff like that.
Automation isn’t the same as an AI any more than you can call the scripts that govern in-game critter behaviour “AI.” We call it that as a shorthand, but they’re simply automated, rather than intelligence.
I’ve always seen Vox as basically text-to-speech. It’s a system that can be fed text announcements which it can then automatically create by splicing in words, but it isn’t capable of creating new sentences on its own to respond to real-time events. The reason you do this over recording whole messages is convenience and expediency. You don’t need to get someone in to do five takes of a long sentence just because a lift went down, you can type “Sector C cargo lift south out of service. All employees, use cargo lift north until further notice.” As long as it took me to type that on my keyboard is as long as it takes to get Vox to start announcing it, and it’s far more convenient, not to mention far more memory-efficient, than recording whole announcements.
And I DO buy that the male Vox would be more versatile than the female one. It would simply have more words recorded for it as a legacy system that’s in the process of being replaced by a newer, more pleasant one.
If anyone listens to the sound files, they’ll see that the VOX sounds are there- they’re just not set up correctly.
I can’t wait for the devs to add it in. Once they do, I’m going to reply Black Mesa.
I read through all the VOX announcements on the wiki again today and man, I really wish they’d been in the original Half-Life. It seems like they were written to play throughout most of the whole game and they really add another layer to the story in my opinion. I certainly hope the Black Mesa devs eventually add those or equivalents to the other chapters.
I noticed that some of the VOX intercom system announcements, presently in the game, incorporate the surnames of many of the BM Devs, which are attached to fictitious characters, such as Lieutenant Montero, Agent Dale and Agent Teunissen, to name a few.
A perk of being a Dev.
Where can you find these VOX announcements? I found the link to the ones for HL1 but not the ones for BM.
I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the ones for Black Mesa. Though I read there were supposed to be more that might be added back in later.
It… It was actually broken? Huh. I never even really noticed it was missing.